With development of mobile broadband service, the bandwidth required by a user equipment increases greatly. At present, a base station may be set to provide service of multiple cells or a low-power access point may be introduced in a macro network scope to enhance system capacity to meet the requirements of the user equipment.
For example, in an LTE (Long Term Evolution) network, a base station identifier occupies 20 bits and a cell identifier occupies 28 bits, so that 1 to 256 cells can be set on a base station and that the base station can provide service of 1 to 256 cells. For another example, a low-power access point HeNB (Home eNB (evolved Node B, evolved NodeB), home base station) is introduced in a macro network, where an HeNB provides service of only one cell and the HeNB can enhance or expand macro network coverage, so as to enhance system capacity.
The prior art has at least the following problems:
A base station can provide service of at most 256 cells, and cannot provide service of more cells, and a HeNB provides only one cell. With continuous development of broadband service, the cell service provided by the base station and the HeNB will hardly meet user requirements.